


Manipulated Timeline

by thecolouryes



Series: Snapshots in the Life of a Time Traveller [1]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Timeline, Alternate Universe, Crossed Timelines - Jack Harkness, F/M, near paradox, seriously though guys get your paradox goggles ready, wibbly wobbly mess of timelines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-27
Updated: 2009-08-27
Packaged: 2017-11-20 08:37:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/583365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecolouryes/pseuds/thecolouryes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Working for Torchwood behaves normally for Jack Harkness, until he wakes up to discover he’s crossing his own timeline.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Meetings

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first vaguely serious fanfic I ever wrote. Anna is a decently-developed character, if rather Sue-ish. I have some one-shots about her that I'll put up eventually.
> 
> Please enjoy this; it has been beta'd by a friend on ff.net.

He woke to an unusual beeping coming from his wrist strap. It was a warning, that he knew, but he couldn't place what it was a warning  _for_. The sound was slightly reminiscent of the way it had sounded when it had gone haywire when they were moving bodies that one time…

He pressed a few buttons and waited slightly impatiently for the readout. "Shit!"

He was dangerously close to crossing his own timeline.

x

"Jack Harkness, you are under the authority of Torchwood," the director of Torchwood One drawled in a bored voice.

"This is bigger than that!" he yelled back. "I'm crossing my own timeline! You can't understand how catastrophically dangerous that is!"

"For you, maybe," he continued, no less bored. "You've explained to us that time travel is a delicate thing. However, you remain under our jurisdiction–"

"This wasn't supposed to happen!" Jack interrupted. The director finally looked like he might be interested. Or, no, maybe not.

"Supposed to happen?"

"As you said, the delicate balance of time…" He shook his head; he thought he'd taught them this already. "That's not the point!"

"What  _is_  the point?" A knock interrupted the men's heated discussion. The director's secretary stuck her head in the door.

"Mr. Director? Miss Harpwell has achieved her objective."

"Really?" The director finally sounded honestly interested. "Let her in, of course!" The slightly mousey secretary nodded and pulled her head back. The wide doors swung open. A very pretty redhead entered the room, followed by three people.

"Fuck," Jack muttered. It was the Doctor, Rose, and himself.

"Agent Harpwell, I thought you completed your objective," Torchwood's director said.

"I have," the young woman answered.

"So who are these people?"

"The Doctor, Rose Tyler, and Captain Jack Harkness." The director turned to Jack – the immortal one – with a look of finally,  _slightly_ , believing him.

"Captain?"

"Sir?"

"You and Miss Harpwell will accompany the Doctor to the research centre. I will send for someone to take these companions to the cells.

"Aye, sir," Harpwell answered. "Well, Captain, Doctor, this way." Jack glanced at the director, Jack and Rose standing there bewildered, and finally Agent Harpwell shepherding the Doctor out of the room.

He hurried after the last pair.

"I'm sorry; we haven't been properly introduced." Agent Harpwell extended a hand towards Jack as they walked on either side of the Doctor. "Level One Special Agent Anna Harpwell."

"Pleasure to meet you," Jack answered, shaking her hand politely.

"I'm sure it is," she replied. Jack had a sudden feeling that she knew more than she let on. "I know who you are." He laughed.

"And who do you think I am?"

"Captain Jack Harkness, the man who can never die." She raised an eyebrow, but kept her gracious, charming smile. "And an insatiable flirt." He smirked and gave her a salute.

"At your service, ma'am."

"What you're doing is incredibly dangerous."

"What?" Anna nodded back towards the director's room, which still held the mortal Jack and Rose.

"Crossing your own timeline." Jack narrowed his eyes suspiciously.

"How would you know about that?" Anna smirked, held up her left arm in front of her, and pulled down the sleeve of her jacket to expose a black wrist strap similar to Jack's.

"Time Agent," she answered. "And I've already met you."


	2. Introductions

Jack was literally stopped by the information Anna imparted. He stood still, gaping at her like an idiot, for a few seconds. Then he regained his composure and sprinted the few steps to catch up with the pair again. "What do you mean, you've met me before?" he asked in an undertone. He wasn't worried about the Doctor hearing, but he didn't want the assorted Torchwood members who lined the corridor to look at the supposed Doctor to have such insider knowledge.

"If you're trying to keep me out of the loop, you'll have to try harder," the Doctor called back. Anna gave Jack a look that he read as a question of trust.

"I'd trust the Doctor with my life," he answered.

"All of them?" Her soft pitch was even more effective than his: he barely caught what she said, but he couldn't have mistaken it. Jack frowned. Just how much did this girl know about him? He gave a quick nod in response. "Good!" she said brightly. "That makes this much easier. Follow me."

Anna led the men to the end of the corridor and down a flight of stairs. She put her thumb on a scanner pad, which the Doctor looked ready to laugh at. "Fingerprints!" he scoffed. " _Wait_  until you humans discover full-body bioscans. Have fun tricking  _those_." Anna glared at the Doctor, took her thumb off the scanner, and used it to hold down a radio button mounted in the wall above the scanner.

"Level One Special Agent Anna Harpwell, requesting use of Interrogation Room Three," she said sweetly. "Accompanied by Jack Harkness of Torchwood 3, interrogating the Doctor. No surveillance or recording, please." The lock on the door clicked open and a voice crackled back through the speaker grille.

"The room is ready for you now, Miss Harpwell."

"Thank you." She ushered Jack and the Doctor in and shut the door behind her. Then, she locked it, flipped open her wrist strap, and got to work entering a few commands. She turned around to explain that she was disabling the hidden recording devices in the room, but she stopped when she saw the Doctor's expression. It was one of utter revulsion.

"You are completely and entirely  _wrong_ ," the nine-hundred-year-old alien informed the immortal man, who sighed.

"This isn't about me," Jack said. He turned to Anna. "Who the hell are you?" She took a deep breath, like she was about to begin a long and complicated story.

"My name is Jamie Annalily Harpwell, but I absolute hate the name Jamie, so I go by Annalily – or Anna. I was born 4239 on the planet Moonshine and joined the Time Agency at eighteen. On one of my first trips alone, I went ahead to the 51st Century, where I met you – Jack. Then, we, umm, traveled together for a while." Neither Jack nor the Doctor missed the blush that crept up the girl's face. While Jack smiled at his accomplishment, the Doctor looked slightly more exasperated.

"With all of these rogue Time Agents, how does the Time Agency survive?" he wondered rhetorically.

"It doesn't," Jack answered. Anna gave him a funny look, but went on with her story.

"So then one day, you suggested we go to 1940," she said to Jack. "So I did. You've got better technology than I do, so I always go to the new place first. You usually follow pretty closely. You explained it to me once, something about following in the wake of another time traveler... Anyway, the point is that there's a window of time that I'm supposed to wait before I give up on you coming. It's usually about a week, but normally you arrive only at most an hour or two after me. Only, this time, you didn't. So, once I realized you weren't coming, I followed your advice and installed myself in Torchwood. And you were right, that program  _did_  come in handy."

"What program?" Anna typed a few things into her wrist. A virtual screen popped up, the holographic image being relayed the same way Jack was used to receive hologram messages. This one looked like a computer screen rather than someone he knew, however. The background image was also slightly familiar... "Artificial Memory Creator," the virtual program declared itself on the top of the artificial screen.

"This one," Anna explained. Jack and the Doctor gave the program similar frowns.

"Give it here," the Doctor ordered. Anna held out her arm for him to investigate it. He tuned his sonic screwdriver onto it. Jack and Anna tried to drown out the noise with talk.

"Why didn't you go back to wherever – and whenever – you were with me?" Jack wanted to know.

"Some part of the transport blew. Now it's useless in that regard. Time, space, I can't do either. I thought the Torchwood lot would be able to help me, but they're more backwards than I expected. I had to teach them how to use the thumbprint scanners!" She laughed brightly. "Imagine not know how to use a thumbprint scanner!"

"This  _is_  1940, remember. And we're still on Earth," Jack pointed out. Anna shook her head.

"Yeah, yeah." She changed tactics, addressing him now. "I distinctly remember your telling me that your escapades with the Doctor began in 1941 London. What are you doing here?"

"Actually, I had something to – shit! I didn't tell him."

"What?"

"Nothing too pressing, just something they sent the man who can't die into London to tell the director of Torchwood in person."

"This is bad," the Doctor interrupted.

"What, that I forgot? Yeah, well, I'll live." Jack suddenly frowned at himself, realizing what he'd said.

"No, not that," the Doctor said, staring at the source code for the program Anna had opened. As he watched it, it evolved, and not for the first time since he'd started investigating it.

"Oh, should we have not mentioned that Jack can't die?" Anna wondered. The Doctor crinkled his nose as if he smelled something bad.

"No, not that, either. I could  _smell_  that the second I saw him."

"So what is it, then?" Jack asked.

"This program..." he began. Jack saw him hesitating, looking at the program rather than meeting their eyes, but kept himself from bugging the Doctor to go on. "It's a bit of the TARDIS."

"What?!" Jack and Anna exclaimed together.


	3. Discoveries

"I'm sorry, Doctor," Jack said.

"What are you apologizing for?" Anna asked.

"Well, I gave you the program, right? That means I stole a bit of the TARDIS. I doubt the Doctor would just  _give_  me a bit of her." The Doctor, in response, gave Jack a look he understood a bit too well.

"It's alright, I suppose. There's not much I can do about it, anyway. This isn't a bit of my TARDIS – not yet, anyway. And you must have had a reason for giving it to Anna. Something that happens as a result of it working –"

"Something like this meeting?" Anna suggested. The Doctor nodded.

"Something like this ends up being important."

"Important enough that I would steal from the Doctor." Jack rubbed his face in his hands. All of this was getting a bit much, even – especially? – for him. "I should really give the director his highly important message."

"Well, we can't just leave the Doctor here," Anna pointed out. "We were supposed to be bringing him to the research centre."

"What do you want to do with me there?" Anna shrugged.

"I dunno. Run some tests; see if we can maybe harness some of your regenerative properties." Jack laughed.

"Not with this antiquated technology, you won't," he commented. Anna shrugged again.

"Like I said, I dunno. Something, though. Then we'll, ah... 'eliminate the threat posed to the...' I can't remember whether it's 'kingdom' or 'world' – or maybe it's 'empire' – anyway, 'eliminate the threat posed to the [something] by the Doctor.' Or whatever it is that Queen Victoria created Torchwood for."

"That's strange," the Doctor noted. "I haven't met Queen Victoria yet."

"I know," Anna replied. "This one told me it was your next regeneration," she said, pointing her thumb at Jack. "Oh!" she exclaimed, realizing what she'd said. She clasped her hands over her mouth as if that would keep her from letting out any more. "Sorry," she mumbled through them.

Jack pulled Anna close and kissed the top of her head as a way of accepting her apology. It had suddenly struck him just how young she was. She couldn't be much older than Rose was when he knew her, and Rose was hardly very old.

"I really need to give the director my message," Jack admitted. They were standing around, each wrapped up in his – or her – own thoughts. Jack wasn't really used to making plans: he was more of a wing it and see what happens – or follow others' plans – sort of guy. However, he did see the benefit in them, especially when he had things to accomplish and everything was acting so weirdly.

"What is your message, anyway?" Anna asked.

"It's for the director's ears only," Jack began, but stopped when he noticed the looks he was getting from Anna and the Doctor. He sighed. "The Thing may be deployed," he relayed as if quoting a very boring textbook.

"What's this Thing?" the Doctor wanted to know. Jack shrugged, which got a curt laugh. "If you don't know what it's about, why send you to deliver the message?"

"Why do you think they sent the man who can't die into London in the middle of the Blitz?" There was a moment of silence, which Anna kindly chose to break.

"I know what it is," she said. Jack and the Doctor turned to look at her. "Well, I know  _where_  it is. It's right down the hall, actually."

"Well?"

"Oh, d'you want me to show you?"

"Yes!"

x

The Thing was a Marulian Manipulator. Jack had heard of them, but never actually seen one. This, he assumed by their reputation, was a good thing. He only knew of very basic studies on them, as what they did made it very hard for them to be studied: they undid reality. It was therefore, he argued with himself, no surprise at all that he was staring in shock and the Manipulator and in a cell some floors up with no idea what was going on. Nor was it surprising that his Doctor was the Doctor, but wasn't Torchwood's. Although, come to think of it, that was rather odd, for the Manipulator to mess with something so fundamental. Usually, they took on smaller jobs and one would sit unnoticed in a corner somewhere until someone spotted it and realized they were never supposed to have existed.

But this one was huge and he'd caught it early. So what was going on? He made a mental list of all the things that had happened since his alarm went off. He'd moaned to the head of Torchwood and gotten nowhere. His Doctor, not Torchwood's, had been found, but an old-future girlfriend of his. He and Rose had been confined to rather nice cells somewhere upstairs, while he and Anna had escorted his Doctor to... Well, they'd been side-tracked first by Anna and then by a mention of the Manipulator. Wait! That was it!

Meanwhile, the Doctor was describing the Manipulator to Anna and handful of stunned workers. It was hard to tell whether or not they believed this big-eared northerner was the Doctor, and where or not they should trust him and his knowledge on the Thing – but he had been able to describe a few key characteristics of the Thing that had taken them weeks of research to figure out, and he'd only looked at it.

"Now," he said after his rather lengthy explanation. "These things always have a common denominator. You know, the one thing that they're  _really_ messing with – their changing reality is just a result of messing with someone's future. Or past, if you want to look at it that way." He paused to give the Manipulator another good glance. "With the size of this thing, it might be that you stupid apes are the mistakes." With a shrug, he prepared to go on.

"No," Jack interrupted. The Doctor turned to look at him. "It's me. The common denominator is me." The Doctor looked about to say something when a shot rang out, cutting him off. Before anyone could think anything more than a simple comprehension of that fact, Jack figured out where the shot had come from. "Fuck!" he yelled, running off towards the cells. He scaled the steps three at a time, not worried about falling and dying, or whether or not he was immortal in this universe, and sure the him imprisoned up there – the one at risk at the moment – was mortal.


	4. Inconsistencies

Jack and Rose – as the immortal Jack had reasoned correctly – were imprisoned in some of the best cells Torchwood had to offer. This, however, did not stop the mortal Jack from being a general bother. He was currently yelling to the guards, who were trying their best to ignore him, demanding to know what they were going to do with the Doctor.

For a while, the best Rose could do was drown out the yelling. It made it rather hard for her to think of a way out of their current situation, not that she was necessarily the best at that. Finally, she gave up and yelled at Jack that he might want to consider what was going to happen to them.

This shut Jack up for about five minutes.

"What are you going to do with us?" he yelled to the guards who were just settling into the peace they had been granted by one of their prisoners.

"Well," said the one right outside the cell, who was clearly taking the brunt of the yelling and quite annoyed for it. "The girl we can use as bargaining against the Doctor. As for you... Well, two men who can't die working for us are better than one."

"What the  _hell_  are you talking about?"

"Oh, I think you know," answered the man. Then, he pulled out a gun and shot Jack.

The Doctor and Anna stared up the stairs after Jack's ascending form.

"I never thought I'd say it," Anna admitted, "but he needs that bloody greatcoat."

x

"What did you do that for?" Rose demanded, running across the cell to her dying friend. The guard was apparently a cell guard and not a field agent for a reason: his bullet had hit Jack at an awkward place between ribs and gut. His greatest risk was of bleeding to death, or possibly infection from the bullet that was still stuck in there somewhere.

"Oh, come off it," the guard replied. "He'll be coming back in a few minutes."

"What are you talking about?" The guard gave Rose a funny look for her tone of disbelief. Suddenly, Jack burst into the cell.

"Jack?" Rose asked incredulously. Jack, however, only paid attention to the guard.

"What the  _fuck_  did you do that for?"

"He'll come back in a moment."

"No he won't! He's mortal now! And I won't ever – fuck! No no no, this is  _bad_."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Jack sighed. The last thing he was going to do in his life was explain why he was dying. Lovely.

Jack took a deep breath and attempted to gain some self-control. "The man you just shot is me. However, that me is completely, one hundred percent mortal. You have just killed him. Therefore, the events that make him immortal will never happen. Therefore, he will never become me. By killing him, you are not only killing him, but killing me and preventing everything I have ever done for bloody Torchwood from ever happening. Do you get it?" The guard gave him a look that clearly said that he didn't. Jack, however, paid no attention to this and instead turned to Rose. She had the dying Jack cradled in her arms.

"Rose," he said softly. She looked up from the dying Jack to the living one. The latter could tell that the former had very little chance of survival. There wasn't the medical science to save him available, even to Torchwood. Jack didn't know how much he could do, before the former him died and he, too, died, long before any of this had happened. He shook his head and adamantly didn't think about it.

The Doctor, with Anna trailing right behind, rushed into the cell. "Jack!" Anna exclaimed. Both looked to her. She went to the dying one and held his hand.

"Don't let me die," he said slowly and deliberately. Anna kissed his forehead.

"I won't," she promised. The considerably older Jack looked to the Doctor, who was watching Rose, who was watching both Anna and the mortally-wounded Jack.

The unmistakable sound of the air raid warning siren went off around them. The guard took one look at the folks in the cells and made for safety. The Doctor broke the heavy silence he left behind.

"Rose, we should get out of here," he said, extending a hand to help her up. She let Jack, on his last breaths, be taken by Anna. She walked blindly with the Doctor leading her, only thinking enough to ask one thing.

"Won't he die?" The Doctor shook his head.

"Jack and Anna will take care of him. He'll be fine."

Jack's eyes slipped shut. "Jack?" Anna asked worriedly. He opened them again. He looked not to her but to his future self.

"I guess this means I'll never become you," he said.

"Don't worry about it," the older Jack answered. "I'm nothing all that special." Jack cracked a small smile in Anna's arms.

"You must be nothing like me, then," he replied. "I'm extremely special." The older man nodded.

"You are. I'm not. I'm not worth fighting for." The Jack in Anna's arms nodded slightly and closed his eyes.

"Sleep well, Jack," Anna whispered to the dying one. He let out a last breath, and she kissed his forehead.

The living one sighed, waiting to disappear.

After a few minutes of waiting, Jack with his eyes closed and Anna holding onto Jack who was cooling off rapidly, Anna broke the silence. "We should get to a bomb shelter."

Jack opened his eyes with a start. "How the hell am I still here?"

"Don't worry about it," she replied. She pulled the greatcoat out from under the dead man and handed it to Jack.

"What am I supposed to do with this?" he asked.

"Put it on," she said in a tone that implied it was the most obvious thing in the world. "We're going to be running to that bomb shelter and I don't want you looking like an idiot." Jack gave her one of the strangest looks he could manage.

"Why would I look like an idiot without it?" Anna smiled.

"You look like an idiot  _running_  without it. It flaps out behind you and makes you look," Anna paused while she searched for the right word; "epic. It makes you look epic." Jack raised his eyebrows but put the coat on.

If nothing else, it would be a reminder that he wasn't exactly supposed to exist, in this parallel-but-not-quite universe.


	5. Conversations

Jack and Anna sat down next to each other on a bench in a slightly secluded corner to give themselves time to calm down. After they had been sitting in silence for some time, Anna impulsively took Jack's hand and laced her fingers into his. "Much better," she murmured. He let out a sort of dejected sigh that Anna read as a warning. She thought it was about their hands, which he seemed to be staring at.

"This is all wrong," he said. She dropped his hand and jumped up from the bench suddenly.

"I'm sorry. I keep forgetting, messing up timelines and–"

"No, not you," he interrupted, grabbing for her hand. She smiled and sat back down next to him. "Rose and the Doctor. They're not supposed to be here.  _I_  wasn't supposed to be here, but I guess that's solved now."

"I'm sorry you died."

"Thanks."

"I don't get it, though, how come you're still here? You died, but..."

"I don't know. Something about keeping the universe in balance. And the Manipulator. I think I might be the only one who can fix all this. I'm certainly the only one who could recognize it all."

"That's a bit of a burden to bear, being the only one who can fix this."

"Why else would I still be here?"

"I don't know."

"Exactly." Jack sighed. He turned and kissed Anna's head again, which she had rested on his shoulder. "You're beautiful." She mumbled something. "What was that?" She smiled.

"You already told me that." Jack had a feeling that wasn't what she had said, but he let it go.

"I'm not surprised I did. It's certainly true."

"Jack..."

"What? It is, even if you are a bit young."

"Hey!" She pulled herself off his shoulder and pushed him playfully. "That's never stopped you before!"

"Before?"

"Aww, shit. I keep forgetting what it really means that it's your future and my past. Just my luck." Jack suddenly narrowed his eyes suspiciously at her.

"How old are you?"

"Twenty?" In the past, Jack would have laughed at the fact that she wasn't sure of her age. Now, however, he not only didn't know his own age but didn't want to. But only twenty and she doubted her age? "Twenty one today, actually," Anna clarified.

"Happy birthday," he replied reflexively. "Twenty-one," he mused, more to himself than to her, but she caught it.

"Don't go making up some excuse about cradle robbing! I know for a  _fact_  that you've done worse." Jack gave her a look, and she flushed a little. "Will do worse," she quickly amended. He laughed.

"What a lovely future I have to look forward to!"

"Well,  _yeah_! It's got me in it!"

x

"Bollocks!"

"What?"

"Why are we sitting here?"

"You mean, why are we in a bomb shelter in the middle of an air raid?"

"Yes, I do."

"Well, maybe because we don't want to die."

"That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard." Jack raised his eyebrows.

"It's the stupidest thing you have ever heard that we don't want to die?"

"Yes!"

"Why, exactly, is it the stupidest thing you've ever heard?"

"You can't die."

"Right, so, I can be out there with no threat to my safety. What about you?"

"I, in fact, have a very special safety. I have a safety on my wrist strap. I haven't used it before now because none of this lot knows how to flip the safety. However, I'm going to take a wild guess and say that you do. In that case, if a German bomb drops on us, I deploy my safety before it hits and when  _you_  just come back to life however you do, you can flip me back into existence." Jack looked skeptical. "Come on, it'll get us out of here. We can figure out how to undo all of this. It can't be that hard to disengage the Manipulator." Jack sighed.

"It wouldn't be disengaging it, it would be activating it. Then it would disappear." Anna beamed.

"So you're okay with it?"

"I suppose. I don't have much of a choice, do I?" Laughing, she dragged him back towards the door they'd now sneak out of.

Along the way, they ran into the Doctor, without Rose. "I can take this out of Rose's memories," he told them. "I could take it out of the rest of these people's, too. As we'll be going back to before I arrived, that's probably wise. But you..."

"You're not allowed in my mind," Jack said simply.

"I'll take your word for it," he answered. "I'd rather not know what happened to you to make you like that."

"You'll know soon enough."

"That's what I'm afraid of." He turned to the redhead. "Anna?"

"You can't get in my head, either. This one's told me too much," she explained, gesturing to Jack. The Doctor nodded.

"I'll get to work taking the memories out of everyone. I'll find you when I'm done." The pair nodded. "Go on!" he urged, and the two ran towards the Marulian Manipulator.

"So how exactly does this thing work?" Anna asked when they were in the cavernous room that held the machine that had given them so much trouble.

"You mean how are they planted?"

"Sure."

"I have no idea. That's one of the most confusing things about them. They just sort of pop up throughout time and space, and create little parallel universes, where things happen that were never supposed to happen."

"Are they normally this huge?" Jack shook his head.

"Normally, they're small, only changing one small decision that someone makes, but that makes an entirely new world." Anna laughed.

"Really? You can change the world on a small decision?"

"Sure! Say one day you woke up and decided that you didn't want to go shopping at noon like you normally do, but four hours later. Maybe, by going four hours later, you don't meet the man you would have met if you'd gone at noon. Maybe the daughter of one of the children you would have had would have discovered the cure for an incurable disease! That could change a huge amount of the future, just because you didn't go to the market at the time you normally did." Anna stared at Jack.

"Really?" He laughed.

"It's unlikely." She shoved him.

"You bugger."


	6. Departures

"Jack!" Anna called across the system's control board. It had taken them a while, but they had managed to hastily patch their wrist straps into the Manipulator's technology, which made for a bit more compatibility, at least on Anna's part, with the Marulian symbols. It also gave them easier access into the trickier systems of the machine – such as actually activating it. "What's the entry code?"

"50XA-alpha-Q," he answered.

"Ta!" she replied.

"Wait! We need the Doctor to finish."

"I know." They worked quietly for a few moments before another small disruption crept up.

"What do you have the time set to?"

"06:10."

"Thanks." They went about; setting up the controls and making sure everything was in working order, without a problem, until–

"Shit!"

"Bloody hell, why are these things never easy?"

"You're telling me!" Anna said with an exasperated sigh, realizing what she had to do. "I'm going to have to climb through the vent!"

"What?!"

"You're too big. This slim body, narrow hips – I'm the only one who will fit."

"Fuck no!"

"You want to be stuck in this loop?"

"No!"

"Then I have to go."

"Anna, no! You'll be fried when the Manipulator initiates!"

"There's no choice. You know that."

"Annalily Harpwell, you're not doing this."

"Too late." She heaved herself up and into the vent and was gone. Then, with amazing timing as usual, the Doctor arrived.

"I'm ready."

"Anna's in the vents."

"What?!"

"Internal fuse blew. She's the only one who fits."

"This is bad."

"You're telling me."

"I fixed it!" Anna's voice came back to them through the vents. "Go, boys!" Jack and the Doctor looked at each other. Neither could send Anna to certain doom. "God dammit, boys, I can't hold this forever!" They just stared at each other. "Fuck you!"

She engaged the remote deploy with her wrist strap.

"Anna!" Jack yelled with the slightly familiar tug of undoing reality. The Doctor looked away, feeling the hurt.

With the help of the Marulian Manipulator, reality undid itself.

Jack awoke with a start. It was the morning that he'd had that strange dream.

Speaking of dreams… He ran the last few miles into the city of London. He vainly tried to find a ride to the Torchwood headquarters, but it proved to be a bit more worth his while to just run there. It wasn't as if his heart was going to give out on him.

Once there, he headed to the basement where confused specialists were quite literally scratching their heads at the disappearance of the manipulator. Asking around, Jack learned the only thing left of the giant contraption that had once filled the entire basement was a small leather wrist strap. He told them he knew whose it was and promised to return it. He spoke with such authority on the matter that they trusted him – especially because he could tell them what had disappeared and theorized a situation or two in which it would have been activated and therefore lost.

He took the wrist strap to a flat owned by some friends of his who worked for Torchwood 1. The brothers recognized the hurt look in his eyes and didn't ask questions. They let him into their study, agreed not to bother him, and asked him if he wanted any coffee, which he politely declined. He had a slightly more pressing matter at hand.

After an hour of trying everything he knew on Anna's wrist strap itself, Jack decided he needed a break. He put the bit of black leather on the desk and went and got a drink of water, to do something to clear his head. When he got back to the study, the wrist strap itself hadn't changed, but Jack had gotten an idea. He flipped open his own wrist strap and spent the next twenty minutes hacking into Anna's with his own. Once he was in, he crossed his fingers, closed his eyes, and tried the safety.

It worked.

Anna slowly began to materialize in front of him. He was ecstatic that it had worked and was beaming because of it. Anna smiled at him, expecting him to say something brilliant to her.

Instead, all she got was "This is really antiquated technology!" Anna frowned.

"Come off it! I bet  _your_  wrist strap doesn't have a safety!"

"I don't need one!" She shook her head.

"Jack..." She pulled him into a sudden hug. He held her close, loving the fact that he could envelop himself in her presence.

"That last thing you said," he murmured in her ear, his low voice sending a shiver down her spine. "Was that a threat or a promise?"

"A promise," she hissed back and stole his lips with her own.

She broke from the kiss early. He frowned. "Have I done something wrong?" Beaming, she shook her head.

"Absolutely not. Do you still have the map of Cardiff I gave you earlier?" He dug in the pockets of his greatcoat. They were certainly a nice addition. Unearthing the right bit of paper, he handed it over.

"Thanks! 51° 27′ 50″ N, 3° 9′ 50″ W," she read out, punching things into her wrist strap.

"What are you doing?"

"Leaving."

"Now?!"

"Yes! You yourself said not to stay in one place too long."

"Why would I say something like that?" She gave him a pitying look.

"'You run into too many ghosts,'" she quoted. After a moment, her demeanor completely changed. "Pick a day," she ordered. He narrowed his eyes.

"Why?"

"Just do it!"

"Alright! Oh, I don't know… December 3rd."

"December 3rd," she repeated, beaming again. "I like it." She punched a few more things in. "Right. You there, Captain Jack Harkness. December 3rd, 2008, be on the lookout for yours truly." She pressed a button and began to dematerialize. "Love you." Her half-there lips brushed his cheek. "I know I shouldn't, but I do."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hoped you liked this short story. I have a few more one-shots of Anna that will show up shortly.


End file.
